


The One the Battles Always Choose

by Dira Sudis (dsudis)



Category: Venom (Movie 2018)
Genre: Canon Breakup, Canon Reckless Disregard for Personal Safety, Depression, Eddie Brock Protection Squad, Hopeful Ending, Hurt/Comfort, Multi, Reference to Past Suicide, Suicidal Thoughts, suicide threat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-16
Updated: 2018-11-16
Packaged: 2019-08-24 15:37:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 15,614
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16642991
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dsudis/pseuds/Dira%20Sudis
Summary: Eddie thinks a lot about ways to die. He always has. It's fine.Except Anne doesn't agree with that assessment, and neither does Venom. (Dan mostly just wants Eddie to go a week without being hospitalized for any reason at all.)





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Let me know if you have questions about the content or if there's something else you wish I'd tagged for! 
> 
> This started out as "oh hey what if Eddie had an ongoing suicidal ideation problem and Venom Was Not Having It?" and then 12,000 words of Anne and Dan reacting to Eddie also happened. But the Venom part is in there too! Eventually!
> 
> Title from "Breaking the Habit" by Linkin Park.
> 
> Thanks to sinspiration and miriad for beta!

Eddie has always done it: sometimes more, sometimes less, but he can't remember a time when the idea was new. He can go months without really thinking about it, but in the end it always turns up again, sliding into its familiar place in his thoughts like it never left. 

It doesn't always _mean_ anything, even. Lots of times it's just... checking the locations of the exits in case of an emergency. He thinks, _oh, yeah, I could get out that way if I need to_ , but he doesn't actually need to, so it's just a thought flitting through his mind when his gaze falls on something sharp, or something overdoseable, or something that wouldn't budge if he smashed his bike into it. It's just like noticing any other property of an object: size, color, shape, could I use this to kill myself.

And, okay, yeah, there have been times when it meant more than that. There have been times when the emergency felt pretty damn serious, times when he was edging toward those exits. He tested things a few times, just checking to be sure he could when he _really_ needed to. 

There are a few fine scars near his left armpit, and along the insides of his thighs. Just checking that he could push a blade through, that he would know how and wouldn't pull back at the first sight of his own blood. And he took too many pills a few times--not _that_ many, just enough to be more than it should've been. Just to see what would happen, how it would feel. 

This is why he doesn't like heights. There's no way to test them but the jump, and when he's near them he can't think of anything but jumping. 

But he never did jump, never pushed the blade through to an artery. He never actually _tried_ , not like he meant it for sure, even if he gave himself a lot of chances to do it by mistake.

If he were going to admit it to anyone, if he were going to talk about it--spit out the explanation he's reflexively scripted in his head like it's a very special episode of The Brock Report--he'd laugh a little and say it's because he's just enough of a coward. Not that he was afraid of succeeding, at those times when the exit was starting to look really appealing, but because he knew he'd flinch from it at the last second, that he'd make some frantic effort to survive. Dial 911 before he passed out, put on a tourniquet, whatever. 

And that's the part he's always known he didn't have the guts for: surviving, having to feel the pain, and face people knowing that he'd tried, and stick around to deal with the aftermath. The truly unforgivable screw-up, the one that would really force people to do something about him. And then he'd have to talk about it for real, not just the monologue in his head where he can make it okay if he can make his imagined audience laugh. There wouldn't be any escape. Not even in his own body, if he managed to do himself some kind of permanent damage.

Or, worse, he'd find out that no one actually gave enough of a shit to do anything about him at all. He'd have to know _that_ for sure. 

Whatever it is he's really scared of, it's been enough. It was enough all through his alternately angry and miserable teen years and his truly stupidly reckless twenties. By the time he hits thirty he's pretty used to it as just a feature of his brain: he thinks about how he could kill himself, even plans it out when he's feeling shittier than usual, but he doesn't actually do it. He won't, probably. Statistically, if he's made it this far without really trying, he won't.

Unless, you know. Unless there's a real emergency, someday, and then he'll be ready.

But he's doing fine, honestly. There's nothing to make a big dramatic _thing_ about. Leaving New York makes for some rough moments, but by the time he's settled in San Francisco with Annie, he's okay. He hardly thinks about it all, just every now and then, and always with that overtone of _no need, just checking_. 

And it's only that, only the silent thought. He never jokes about it, or alludes to it, because he learned by the time he was seventeen that people _noticed_ when you said shit like that. It was better if nobody noticed. Better not to have to worry about someone cutting off an escape route you might still need.

So it's fine. Everything's fine. Even when he and Annie fight--or, well, when he does something more stupid than usual that upsets her, and she lets him have it--it doesn't feel like something he's gonna need to escape from. Not really. Because even when Annie's mad at him, she keeps him around. She still cares. And Eddie's pretty good at not making the same mistake twice, so if they stick together long enough he might actually run out of dumb shit to do. 

Then comes a fight worse than usual, and Eddie's feeling angry and put-upon instead of just stupid and embarrassed and sorry. He's trying to be good enough for her, he _is_ , and yeah, he keeps fucking up, but she is _really_ mad this time, mad enough for it to feel scary. Mad enough for him to feel like this might be the time she kicks him to the curb.

It's nearly as much a surprise to him as it must be to her when he blurts out, "Fine! If I'm such a worthless piece of shit, why don't I just go ride my bike off the end of a pier?"

It's a stupid thing to say on so many levels. For one, he's long since learned not to say shit like that, and for another trying to make Anne feel sorry for him when she's still mad never works. He's not even trying to make her feel anything, exactly, he just feels like--well, like he's backed up against a big fucking wall and he needs to know there's a way out. 

But _that_ isn't a way out he's ever contemplated. It would be so fucking _obvious_ , and so _slow_. He almost certainly wouldn't die on impact with the water, from just the height of a pier; he'd have to wait to drown, injured and tangled up in his bike, and probably someone would save him. He might even save himself. He's a strong swimmer, and drowning takes so fucking long, he'd never be able to stick with letting it happen long enough for it to take. He'd be bound to fight it. 

Plus, his bike never did anything wrong to deserve being treated like that.

All of that flashes through his mind-- _fuck, I shouldn't have said that, why did I say that, that was fucking stupid_ \--while the color is draining from Anne's face. She's bone-white with shock, the edges of her makeup suddenly stark and obvious. Eddie thinks he might have an opening there to apologize, to deflect, to get this over with, but then shock changes back to anger--cold, hard fury this time instead of the familiar yelling.

"Don't you _ever_ fucking make a threat like that. Ever again. Don't you _dare_. And don't you dare--" She shakes her head sharply.

Eddie holds his hands up, totally lost now. "No, hey, I didn't--I'm sorry, that was shitty, I didn't mean it."

"Didn't you?" Anne asks, still icy. "Were you just trying to shut me up? Is that the only thing it meant?"

There is absolutely no right answer. Eddie struggles for a few seconds under her ruthless stare before he says, "Yeah, yes, that's all, it was stupid, I'm not gonna do anything like that. Of course I wouldn't, why would I do that? I was just being a shit."

"You _swear to me?"_

"Yeah, yeah, Annie, I swear, of course."

Anne shakes her head and tells him it's time for him to leave, and Eddie goes home to his studio in the Tenderloin to call himself an idiot and stare at the ceiling. Eventually, hours and hours later, it occurs to him to wonder why, exactly, she took him so seriously. Why she pressed him until he promised he hadn't meant it. 

So he does some research, and then he feels more like a dumb piece of shit than he already did. He calls her and gets her voicemail because it's ass o'clock in the morning. Not because she blocked his number. He's pretty sure.

"Annie, I just want to say again, I'm sorry about--about saying that, threatening that, when we were fighting. I just want you to know, okay, nothing like that's gonna happen and if I ever do get myself killed in some stupid way, it's not gonna be anybody's fault but mine. And I'm not looking to. I want to live a long time, Annie, long enough to figure out how to be the guy you deserve. And, uh... I'm sorry, and I love you. Okay? So let me know, uh, yeah. Let me know. I love you. Night."

He actually manages to sleep, after that.

It's another day and night before he wakes up to Annie calling him. She says she wants to talk tonight but she knows he's got interviews lined up all day. He thanks her for calling and apologizes a couple more times before he bolts out of bed, because, _shit_ , the interviews.

But that has to mean it's gonna be okay. She hasn't deleted all of his shit out of her Google Calendar that she keeps meticulously color-coded and fanatically up to date. Eddie happens to know that he's got a really nice blue-green color for all his stuff on the calendar, like she deliberated carefully to get the closest color to his eyes.

And sure enough, that night she lets him apologize for the stupid shit he did that they were fighting about in the first place. She apologizes for yelling at him so much about it, and he figures they're getting close to the makeup sex part of the evening. 

Anne leans in close and puts a hand on his cheek, and Eddie's starting to smile, and then she says, "Now. About you threatening to kill yourself."

Eddie winces, squinting his eyes almost shut because he can't help the impulse to hide a little even though he knows better than to pull away. "Annie, I--"

"I want to tell you why I reacted like that," she says. "Why I--"

Something must go over his face, because she stops, and he can see she's onto him. 

"I figured it must be something," Eddie admits. "Did some research. Same last name, your hometown, wasn't too hard to spot. Were you, uh... were you close?"

Annie closes her eyes as she nods. "As kids, up through high school--we went to the same high school. We were friends more than cousins, really. We grew apart a little in college, but... she called me. That night. It was my 1L year, I was at the library until two in the morning, but--when I was on my way home I saw that she'd been calling me, and I just--I didn't call back, I didn't even send her a text. I thought I would call her in the morning. She died right around sunrise; my mom woke me up at eight when she called to tell me."

Which means there was a window of about four hours when Anne could've called back and had a chance of changing something.

"Aw, hell, Annie, you know that's not--it wasn't you, it wasn't--"

Anne shakes her head. "I know. I was in therapy through the rest of law school, and... well, I've made as much peace with it as I'm going to, probably, but it's never going to not be there. I'm never getting Kim back, and I'm never..." Anne takes a deep, careful breath, and puts her other hand to his cheek, holding him still as she looks into his eyes.

"So you have to promise me," Anne says. "Don't tell me it was a joke or it didn't mean anything, I'm not going to debate that with you. Just _promise me_ , if you ever--if it's ever _not_ a joke, anytime, anywhere, no matter what--you _call me_ and you don't do anything you can't take back until we talk. Promise me, Eddie, because you know exactly what it'll do to me if you don't. _Promise_."

Eddie feels the truth right down to his bones, more inescapable than her grip: what Anne means by _no matter what_ is _even if I've finally dumped you for good by then, I'll still care and I'll still hold you to this_. She's planning for that, even now, even when they're making up. Even though she's keeping him for now, knowing whatever she thinks she knows about him.

But, honestly, it _was_ just a dumb thing he said, he's _not_ gonna do anything like that, and anyway, what else can he say? "I promise, Annie. I promise. I'm not gonna do that to you, not ever. I swear."

"Okay," she says. "That is a binding oral contract, Eddie, I'm serious."

"I'm serious too," Eddie says, and kisses her, and she allows him to end the discussion there.

A month later he asks her to marry him, and she says yes without hesitating. He lets himself believe for a while that that means that that was the last big fight and they're gonna be okay. He moves in with Anne, sublets his place to some interns from the network who split it three or four ways. He's got his desk in Annie's second bedroom and she calls it his office, and his LPs are in the living room and they dance sometimes right in front of the windows. They're okay, and Eddie's okay, and he honestly hardly ever looks at anything and thinks, _Oh, I could use that._ He doesn't need an escape route now.

A few months later he fucks it up for good, so badly that Annie doesn't even really yell that much, just takes her ring off and tucks it in his shirt pocket and tells him goodbye. He doesn't even know what to do with himself--no job, no Annie, no idea what happens next--so he wanders the streets for a while, his brain a blank, his eyes flitting to the cable cars, to the tops of buildings.

But he can't do that to a bunch of tourists, or people walking around on the sidewalks, so it doesn't matter. He's not _looking_ looking, anyway, he's just... noticing while he walks around. He's too stunned to do anything at all about this. It's not real yet.

It's been maybe three hours when he gets a text from Anne.

_I'm going out of town for a few days to get my head together, so feel free to stay in the apartment until Saturday if necessary. Leave your key on the counter when you've moved your stuff out._

And it's not like the ring wasn't final, but that's... that's really final. Eddie notices that he's sitting on the curb next to a newspaper box, curled down over his phone, but that's okay. He's out of everybody's way, at least.

It's final, but it's not actually _finished_. He has his marching orders from Anne. Now he just has to... get up, and go home to the apartment that's not gonna be home anymore, and pack his shit so he's out of Anne's hair by Saturday. He guesses he does have a place to go, sort of. 

The subletters in his old studio have actual lease agreements--Anne insisted--but it's always month-to-month because they're interns and shit happens. Eddie's not completely clear on how much notice he's supposed to give _them_ if he wants them out, but he might as well give them a heads up. He might be stuck sharing with them or in a weekly hotel for a while, but the sooner he starts the sooner they'll be out.

He searches through his contacts until he finds the one with TENANT after the name who he's texted most recently and therefore is pretty sure still lives there. Not totally sure, because they're interns and shit happens, and if the current batch have sub-sub-let their corners of the studio it won't be the first time. 

He taps out a message. _Hey, gonna need to move back into the studio soon. Let me know how much time you guys are going to need to move out._

It's only a minute before his phone vibrates in his hand.

_We heard about what you did. We'll be gone by midnight tomorrow._

Eddie squints at the message, honestly trying to figure out what they think he's done to the studio, and then realizes that they're interns, too full of freshly-minted journalistic ethics to cling to a cheap place to live for all they're worth. 

"Okay," he says to his phone. "Well, that's gonna be a learning experience for you."

He feels dimly offended at being treated like a leper. Being a shitty boyfriend and a shitty reporter isn't actually contagious. 

Although, hell, _Facebook_ knows who shares his address--it keeps suggesting his intern-subletters, including the ones he doesn't know about until Facebook rats them out. Carlton Drake can probably figure it out. Maybe it is better that they get the hell away from his place as soon as possible.

He gets up and turns his feet toward home--toward Anne's place. He's not actually far away. He checks the time, because the clouds have rolled in and he has no idea how long he's been walking around. 

It's two in the afternoon, which just feels weird. It should be the middle of the night, shouldn't it? Two in the afternoon isn't the right time for anybody's life to be falling apart. Everyone who still has a job is at work; the interns are busily interning, or at least pretending to be busy interning while they scour craigslist for a place to move into by tomorrow. But Anne's driving off somewhere and Eddie's just wandering the streets.

Eddie lets himself in, automatically looking for Mr. Belvedere as he closes the door quickly behind him. Anne's gone until Saturday, so Eddie needs to make sure he keeps the cat fed until then. He needs to absolutely not fuck this up, no exceptions; he can't have Anne thinking he took out some spite toward her on her cat.

Except, he realizes as he walks further inside, the apartment is an extra-silent kind of silent. He already sort of knows, but he checks anyway, looking for Mr. Belvedere's dishes and food and his current favorite toys. 

They're all gone, and so is the cat carrier. Anne hadn't left the cat behind when she graciously permitted Eddie the run of the place for three more days. She'd taken him along, like Eddie couldn't be trusted.

Eddie sits down on the kitchen floor, right next to the mat the food and water bowls usually sit on, and cries. It comes out of him in wrenching sobs, shaking his whole body, echoing off the tile and the cabinets, and he keeps telling himself to stop, but why? Neighbors won't hear him in this solid old building, and Anne's not coming back anytime soon. He doesn't even have to worry about Mr. Belvedere coming over to hiss at him.

He's alone again. He finally showed Annie just how much of a fuckup he is, ruined her career along with his own, made her believe he didn't even care, and now she's gone. She's gone and she took the _cat_ , and it makes sense but he can't let that go. She didn't even trust him to feed the cat, she didn't--she took the _cat_ and there's no other living creature around to give a shit about him, to even notice him. If he died right here on the kitchen floor, no one would know or care for days.

His thoughts flit to the things he's made mental note of, in the last year or two. The knives in their wooden block. He wouldn't even have to stand up, he could just--

He kneels up and looks across the perfectly neat countertop, and the knife block isn't there.

For a second he can't make sense of it at all. He wonders if someone stole it, wonders if he should look for intruders or other stuff missing.

Then he gets it. Anne didn't trust him with the kitchen knives any more than she trusted him with the cat. He pushes himself up to stand and realizes there's a sticky note on the counter where the knife block should be. It says, _Remember you promised me._

Eddie shuts his eyes, folding down over the counter and pressing his cheek to the cool granite. She planned for that. She's probably waiting for his call. She's probably got the hospital she'll have him committed to all picked out. She's probably had it picked out for a long time, probably programmed the number into her phone months ago, so she'd be ready.

Anne prepares for emergencies too. 

He's tempted to call her. Not so much because he'll do something stupid otherwise--that flicker of an impulse is already past--but because this is a promise from her, too. She's promising that she'll answer the phone. If he tells her that's why he called, she'll come back. She'll take care of him one more time. She'll care, even if he's a total fuckup. _Because_ he's a total fuckup. He won't get her back for good, but he won't be alone, either. 

But once he makes that call, it's not just Anne taking precautions because of a dumb thing he said once that she couldn't risk not taking seriously. If he makes the call then it's true, and he's a person who might really do it--and then he might as well have tried. She won't ever look at him and not see what he might have done if she didn't stop him.

That... that means if he _doesn't_ call, then there's a chance. Not much of a chance, but... not _no_ chance. If he acts like a fucking grownup long enough to do what she asked, get his shit out of here and leave his key on the counter, then... then he hasn't made any more of a mess of things than he already did, and he hasn't been the worst possible fuckup, and maybe... maybe someday he'll run into her again somewhere, and they'll get to talking and she'll smile at him like she used to, and...

It's not much, but it's not absolutely nothing. He doesn't have to call her and he isn't breaking that promise. He won't hurt her more than he already has, or make her angrier than she already is. That's step one. He has to do that first, and then he can figure out the next thing.

He splashes some water on his face and dries it on a patterned kitchen towel, carefully hanging it up again when he's done. Then he goes out to look for boxes.

* * *

He sleeps on Anne's couch that night, unable to face lying alone in the bed they shared. He's on the couch the next night, too, and the night after that he's back in the studio, boxes piled everywhere. The interns didn't even trash the place on their way out, or steal anything obvious. He dug up his own sheets and blankets to make the bed, stuff that had stayed boxed up the whole time he was living at Anne's. 

He doesn't realize, until he's lying in bed that night not sleeping, that with the minor rearrangement of furniture the interns left behind, he can see the knives on their magnetic strip from the bed. The neon from the sign just outside his windows makes them gleam in the mostly-darkness of his studio. He thinks about going and shoving them in a drawer.

He thinks about having them in his hands, thinks about where else he could shove them. He turns over and pulls his pillow over his head. He's not thinking about it. He doesn't even _want_ to think about it. He's not going to actually _do_ anything; he's not that guy. He's an adult. He's never done anything he couldn't take back, and he's not going to.

He sits up in bed and rearranges stuff on the shelves that partially block off the bed from the rest of the studio until he can't see the knives when he's lying down.

He still knows they're there.

The balcony is there, too, just outside the windows. All the windows are locked, and he put glue on all the latches years ago, when he first moved in. He doesn't check that none of the interns ever scraped it off. The next day he buys a plant and puts it on the windowsill to block his path to the balcony, and the alley four stories down.

He has plans, at first. He'll find another job soon enough, or maybe do some freelance--he could start up his own YouTube channel, with maybe a blog and an Instagram or something. People know his name; he'd get the hits to go somewhere with it. 

But every story he looks at writing feels like looking at a knife. _Is this something I can use to kill myself?_ Yes. Yes it is. 

There's no point covering the shit that isn't dangerous, and the dangerous stuff, the stuff that was Eddie Brock's bread and butter... he knows what he'd do. Without a producer, without a network to keep him at least somewhat in line, without any reason to give a shit, he'd go too far on something. Maybe not the first story, maybe not the second, but before long he would throw himself right off another cliff. If he's going to mess around with that, he might as well just pull a knife down from the wall, might as well climb out on the balcony. That'd be a lot quicker.

Of course, if he was chasing a story, maybe no one would realize... But Annie would. Annie would know. And he's still just enough of a coward, so he leaves it alone. 

He's got some money, anyway. There's the rent the interns were paying--below market, but still twice as much as the rent-controlled rate he's been paying on the studio. And... well, he's not going to need that honeymoon fund he's been building, is he? 

He wanted to do something nice for Anne. She's a badass, she takes care of everything--she _owns_ that apartment in Telegraph Hill--and she would've handled the honeymoon, too, if he let her. But Eddie wanted to give her one thing she didn't have to organize, one thing he took care of for _her_. One time when she could just relax and be happy, with him, without schedules or deadlines or depositions. Without having to remind him to do anything.

Too little, too late. So fuck it. He dumps the honeymoon fund into his checking account, bit by bit.

But he doesn't sell the ring. Because maybe, maybe... 

He still hasn't called her. He hasn't burned that one last chance. Their promises to each other are still in effect. He hasn't fucked it up, so there's still a chance. And if he calls her, she'll still pick up. 

For a while it's like a vacation, or at least that's what he tells himself. He keeps his gaze averted from the knives and the balcony, and he waters the plant in the window, and he doesn't go chasing stories. He takes care of his bike. He unpacks like he really lives here, like he expects to stick around. He chats with Mrs. Chen at the bodega, and gets to know the current crop of homeless people. He calls 311 about feces on the sidewalk, but he makes sure whoever did it is well out of the way before he dials. 

It's something like a life. And if he feels like he's sleeping in the doorway of the emergency exit, well, that just means he doesn't need to look for one. Not that he would, not really. He's fine. He changes the sheets the next morning every time he spends a night crying. He always wears his helmet when he goes out on his bike. He only eyes trees and light poles and bridge embankments to make sure he _doesn't_ hit them. He dutifully starts looking for work when the money starts running out, but he still doesn't go looking for stories on his own. He doesn't pick fights, doesn't have more than a drink or two at the bar. He keeps his head down when he sees a tough guy waving a gun around.

And then this woman follows him into the bodega and tells him Carlton Drake is still killing people, that he's killing _more_ people. And Eddie is, of course, exactly as much of a coward as he's always been. He tells her no. He tells her to be scared. He walks away.

He walks all the way back to Telegraph Hill, to the apartment he left six months ago. The lights are off, but Mr. Belvedere is in the window, so Anne will be back soon. He stands there, thinking that he should just keep walking, that he shouldn't do this, he has no right to do this, and then a car pulls up and Anne steps out in a cute dress and strappy red heels.

There's somebody else with her now, somebody else using that key Eddie left on the counter. A doctor-- _a surgeon, actually_ \--a good guy. Clean cut, somebody who looks like he belongs with Anne. And it's not even about the other guy, really. It's about Eddie being a fuckup and Anne knowing it. 

He's never getting her back. 

He walks away thinking, _Well, I promised I would talk to you before I did anything I couldn't take back. And now I talked to you._

He walks to the bridge, and for once the height doesn't make any difference. He's already only thinking about jumping. He stands there, holding Annie's ring, the ring he's kept holding on to because _maybe_...

But there's no maybe. She's done with him. She's a good person, she's kind, and maybe she'll feel bad when she hears, but he's not her problem anymore. She's done with him. She's not coming back. He's got nothing left to lose, nothing to protect, nothing to hope for. He may as well jump.

So he calls Dr. Skirth and throws himself off that cliff, in the hope that he can take Carlton Drake down with him.


	2. Chapter 2

It takes a little over forty-eight hours before the impact finally arrives. It's slower than any other method he ever considered, but faster than he thought suicide-by-journalism would be, and honestly a hell of a ride at times.

Only the fall doesn't kill him--Venom's **Goodbye, Eddie** is ringing in his ears when his impossible parachute drops him the last ten feet to the surface of the water. He hits with a stunning smack and keeps falling, and there's a dazed moment when the cool pressure of water closing around him feels like being safe inside Venom again. He thinks that he's willing to cling to that illusion until he drowns in it.

But he was always right to dismiss drowning, about the fact that he was just enough of a coward not to go all the way. He sinks and sinks and sinks and his lungs are aching and then without making a decision he's swimming up toward the light of a dozen little fires, hauling himself toward the surface with only human strength. 

He regrets it almost as soon as he surfaces, but he doesn't have it in him not to keep his head above water once he's caught that first breath, even though it's hard enough work that he knows he's entirely alone. Before he's even figured out where he should try to swim to, there are helicopters above him, small boats coming in, and he puts an arm up when someone shines a light in his face. He's hauled out of the water and he lets it happen, lets them wrap him up in a blanket and rinse his eyes and mouth with bottled water, poke and prod him looking for obvious injuries. 

There are none. Venom saved him, right to the end. 

When they get to the shore, Anne comes running up and hugs him, and Eddie stays quiet and still. He lets her tell the rescue team that she'll take Eddie to see his doctor, that he has a complex medical condition and needs to be taken care of by a specialist. She talks them out of there faster than he would have thought possible, although it's also possible that he's just missing stuff. Nothing feels quite real, not the world around him, not his own body--only his own, now--and definitely not the silence where Venom should be scolding him or talking about how much he likes Anne.

Especially when they get to Anne's car, and Eddie stops, staring at the open door. Only this time Dan's driving, like he's ready to help them run for the border, although he gets out of the car as soon as Anne and Eddie are there. Dan gets into the back seat with Eddie, and Anne gets behind the wheel, heading for the road without sticking around to let anything slow them down. 

Dan, meanwhile, fastens Eddie's seatbelt and then his own; that's backward, Eddie thinks. You're supposed to do your own first. 

Dan is leaning close to him, trying to look into his eyes. "Eddie? Venom? Is Venom--"

Eddie shakes his head and whispers, "Gone."

"Gone?" Dan repeats. He looks toward Anne, and then around, outside. Anne pulls over and looks back too. "Where? Do we need to--"

Eddie closes his eyes, shakes his head. Taps his fist against his head. "Gone-gone. He said goodbye--he was--the fire, he protected me, didn't let me fall too hard. But--the fire. Fire was one of the only things that could... He's gone."

He hopes that's it and he doesn't have to explain more. The resounding silence in the car seems like they know what he meant.

"Okay, then," Anne said. "Hospital it is."

Eddie huffs softly and slumps back against the seat, letting Dan touch his forehead and throat and wrists, press against his belly and chest. Dan can do what he wants, and Eddie's pathetically glad for the touch, for anything that pushes back against the feeling of being totally alone in his body. 

He knew Anne had a hospital picked out for him, and right now he won't even argue. It's for the best, probably. She's not wrong. 

He did make the attempt. He knew what going after Drake could mean and he did it with his eyes open. He survived, thanks to Venom, but he should've died at least four or five times in the last couple of days. He doesn't feel any particular urge to try again right now, but it doesn't mean he didn't try to begin with. It doesn't mean he's not gonna wake up tomorrow and decide it's time to get the hell out, when he doesn't feel like opening his eyes is more effort than he can manage. Annie's got him fair and square this time.

Except, when Dan herds Eddie out of the car and into the bright lights of a hospital, it's not that kind of hospital. It's the same one they brought him to before.

"No MRI," he mumbles.

Dan just squeezes his shoulder and walks him through the emergency room and straight past all the people waiting, through the doors and into a curtained-off cubicle. Dan leaves for a minute, and comes back with a clipboard that Eddie probably should've had to fill out before being left to stink up the waiting room with the smells of seawater and rocket fuel.

Dan gets Eddie's wallet from his waterlogged pants and fills in his information on the forms. Anne shows up and helps him fill in more. Eddie just sits, listening to the silence where Venom should be, shivering a little in his fire rescue blanket.

He shouldn't have let them pull him into the boat. He should have stayed down. Now he's stuck with all of this aftermath, and no one even seems to realize what's actually wrong with him, why he's really here. Even Anne and Dan, who know he lost Venom, don't understand where the real danger to his health actually is. 

He should probably tell them. 

He doesn't.

He peels out of his sodden clothes--Dan's shirt, actually, he thinks, from the back of Anne's car--and drops them on the floor by the room's little shower. He thinks someone probably told him to do this, but it's not outside the realm of possibility that he just wandered away from Anne and Dan and decided to wash up on his own.

There's a hospital gown when he gets out, and a bed, and lights shined in his eyes and blood drawn, wires attached all over and then taken away again. Eddie lets all of this happen too, just like when it was Dan touching him. Anne isn't there after a while, but Dan stays, speaking for Eddie with calm authority to the nurses and other doctors, prompting Eddie to do whatever it is he needs to do. 

Eddie answers some questions after Dan tells him he has to pay attention. He has to figure out what day it is by counting back to the last vaguely normal day, but he gets it right, and they accept that _aw, do we have to talk about_ him _right now?_ means he does know who the president is. 

They take him to a different room after a while, a cold sterile room, and Eddie grabs at Dan's arm.

"Not an MRI," Dan says softly, leaning down over him. "X-Ray. No sound, just radiation that you won't feel."

"Oh, well." Some little bit of Eddie thaws enough to make him try for a careless smile. "As long as it's just radiation."

Dan smiles back, but it's a little too gentle and sad, and Eddie looks away sharply. Dan doesn't say anything, just helps the nurse get him settled on a table. They lay the lead apron over him, and the cool weight covering him makes tears leak from his eyes. It's worse when they take it away.

Afterward they take him to a different room--Dan tells him he's being admitted, so maybe they _do_ have a clue about him--and Anne is there. She has Eddie's hoodie, washed and dry and smelling like Anne's fabric softener instead of the crappy detergent Eddie buys in single-use boxes at the laundromat because he always forgets to actually get a whole bottle at Ralphs. 

Eddie pulls the hoodie on and crawls into bed, and then Anne picks up an insulated bag and brings out a container of fried rice and a plastic tub of egg drop soup, and Eddie can't help sniffling a little in helpless, exhausted gratitude. He might have broken down completely, but crying would get in the way of eating, and he's starving as soon as he lays eyes on the food.

He realizes, halfway through scarfing down his takeout, that there's light leaking in around the drawn curtains; the sun is up. It must be the middle of the day, actually, if Anne could get him takeout. It adds a surreal edge to everything, makes him feel like he's swimming through a dream even before he starts dozing off over his food.

* * *

When he wakes the room is mostly dim, but there's a light shining on Dan, who's sitting in the corner working on something. Eddie lies there and watches him for a while. It's like that calming pool image in the MRI room, but better: it's restful to watch someone just... living, working, knowing what to do. Dan's a good guy. He sat down exactly where Eddie would see him as soon as he opened his eyes. 

He looks tired, though. Worried. Eddie should probably let Dan know he's awake. 

"Hey." It's not really a word, more of a cracked breath, but Dan looks up immediately and comes over. He helps Eddie sip some water from a cup with a straw. 

"How do you feel?" Dan leans a hip against the edge of his bed. 

Eddie rubs his face with his hands and notices the weird lightness, the bareness of his wrists--no, not quite. There's a hospital bracelet, but nothing else. Nothing to hide the pale blue veins, nothing to stand in his way or remind him not to be stupid. His heart beats a little faster and he drops his hands to rest against his stomach, tugging the ends of his hoodie sleeves down to cover his hands. "I'm... tired. Just tired. Sore, I guess."

Dan nods, looking Eddie over. "The good news is that your tests have all come back clear, including the ECG. You went from having some kind of heart failure I've never seen to having the heart of a marathon runner, overnight." Dan pats the center of Eddie's chest, and the touch feels warm even through a few layers of clothes. "The weirdest thing we've found so far is on your chest x-rays. Your actual doctor isn't going to realize that this could possibly mean anything--I think he thinks it's a flaw in the image--but..."

Dan goes back to the chair in the corner and grabs a tablet. When he's perched on the edge of the bed again he turns it to show Eddie a view of his own bones. 

Eddie presses his own hand to his heart when he spots what Dan's talking about. There is a visible line--not a break, but something like a fault line--that passes almost perfectly vertically up his chest, going right through his sternum. Dan shows him the reverse view: the same line is there on his back, cutting through his ribs and spine. 

"This looks to me like an injury that occurred weeks or months ago, where the bones have knit but not fully recalcified, except that I can't imagine anyone suffering an injury of this magnitude, passing through the front and back of their chest, and surviving to heal to this point. But Anne said Venom was going to heal you. She said that's why she brought him back to you, because he told her he could fix the damage he'd done to you and protect you from any more. And I can see the damage to your heart is gone, your other organs are functioning fine again, and this... you didn't have these imperfections on your bones two days ago."

"Yeah," Eddie says, staring. "I... it happened while we were fighting Riot. We got separated--well, we got sort of absorbed, and then there was this noise, and we were separated--" Eddie closes his eyes and breathes through it, struggling to keep himself steady, struggling not to feel that awful wrongness. 

It hadn't been like the other times, when the jet overhead or the MRI machine had made Venom reflexively retreat, into him or right out of his body. Venom had been holding on as hard as he could and Eddie had been holding on right back, both of them already struggling to preserve them as _them_ within Riot. Then there was that _sound_ , tearing them cell from cell. It should have killed both of them, no blade required.

But there had also been a blade. 

"Riot had... weapons," Eddie says, rubbing at his chest again. The ache there has nothing to do with his bones. "When I was defenseless, he stabbed me, right--" Eddie mimes it with his hand, the split second of sickening memory he has, of seeing a huge blade emerge from his chest while he was still trying to make sense of the impact, the impossible pain.

"Venom came back to me. I... I think I was unconscious." He swallows, suddenly needing to know. "Or--was I dead? Dan? Would I have been dead already? Instantly? I don't--I don't remember until Venom was back around me, healing me, but-- _was I dead?_ "

Dan puts his hand over Eddie's, smiling that gentle sad smile again. "Death is more complicated than you'd think. Your heart can stop and we can start it again, people can be without any sign of life, submerged in cold water, for close to an hour, and be revived. You're not dead until your doctors give up on you, basically, and you weren't relying on doctors. You had Venom, and Venom didn't give up on you. He healed you, so you weren't dead. Okay?" 

Eddie blinks. "That's--very results-oriented." 

Dan smiles and it's a little more of an actual smile this time. "We're very results-oriented here. Whatever gets the job done, you know?"

Eddie nods, rubbing his chest again, chasing the edge of a thought. What got the job done... He and Venom, they had gotten the job done. They had stopped the rocket, stopped Riot and Drake, saved the world. They had...

He felt the motion jarring his arm again, that stab and the screech of metal on metal as rocket fuel poured out over them.

"The blade," Eddie says, glancing at the x-ray again, rubbing his chest. "It was Riot's. He had weapons. Venom didn't have anything like that. Riot stabbed me and he left the blade in me, and Venom pulled it out, to heal me, and--that's what we used. To break open the fuel tank, to stop the rocket. Riot was already inside the ship. We couldn't have stopped him if he hadn't left a weapon behind."

Dan raises his eyebrows. "Well. There you go."

Eddie closes his eyes and leans back again the bed. They had to wreck the tank. They had to cause an explosion. And the explosion would have killed both of them--Venom was vulnerable to fire, and if the fire hadn't killed Eddie, the fall would have--but Venom protected him, made sure Eddie would survive. 

**Goodbye, Eddie.**

It's like he hears it again, it shakes him to his bones. His eyes flash open; he sits up in a lunge, snatching the tablet from Dan and staring at the chest x-ray, zooming, flipping from one image to another, searching. 

"Eddie?"

"Is there--can you see soft things on these? Would something soft show up?"

"Oh," Dan said, and Eddie's head jerks up at the apologetic sound of that one syllable. 

Dan reaches for the tablet again. "No, x-rays aren't reliable for soft tissue imaging. A few things, but not... That's mostly what we uses MRIs or CT scans for. But sometimes--" Dan flips through the images, but he's already shaking his head. "Something as large as Venom--he was all over your chest cavity, Eddie, and his density was very... strange. So I can't imagine there wouldn't be some sign on an x-ray. There's nothing. I'm sorry."

"Oh," Eddie echoes, slumping back on the pillow again, closing his eyes. "Okay. Um. I'm really tired, Dan, do I need to--to do anything right now, or--"

"You're staying overnight for observation," Dan says. "I'm covering most of the observing, since your vital signs are so steady. You can rest."

"Okay," Eddie mumbles. "Thanks, Dan. Thanks for..." He's still struggling to think of what he's thanking Dan for when his stomach growls loudly enough to fill the silence. Eddie winces, knowing immediately that it's the kind of hunger that will keep him awake if he tries to ignore it. He's too tired to think about what to eat, or wait for food to arrive, or... "Shit."

"Hang on," Dan says, and Eddie opens his eyes, ready to explain or apologize, but Dan is already over in the corner, rummaging in a messenger bag. He comes back with his hands full of little wrapped packages: a few protein bars, a slightly squashed Snickers, a shiny and pristine Twix. He holds it all out to Eddie. "Emergency snacks, don't leave home without them." 

Eddie grabs the Snickers, rips it open and crams half of it into his mouth. He's still chewing when he asks, "What kind of emergency do you need candy for?"

Dan shrugs. "Any emergency situation where it's still possible to eat candy, really. Emergencies are pretty taxing; never hurts to have some extra fuel in the tank."

Eddie suddenly hears, _feels_ , Venom saying that to him about eating somebody's head. " **Fuel in the tank.** " He feels, all at once, relief that it won't happen again, guilt at the relief, grief heavy as the sea swamping everything. He's twice as exhausted, and the second half of the Snickers is like glue in his mouth. He forces himself to finish chewing and swallow. 

"Here," Dan says softly, making Eddie aware that he's closed his eyes. He opens them to see Dan holding the straw cup near his mouth, watching him with quiet concern. Eddie moves his head just enough to drink from the straw, letting his eyes fall shut again. 

When he's drained the cup and fallen back against the bed, and sleep is coming for him like a fogbank, it occurs to him that he probably should have used his hands, but it's fine. He tries to mumble another _Thanks, Dan_ , but he's not sure if he gets it out before he's asleep.

* * *

He wakes up again and it's morning this time, he's pretty sure. Anne's with him this time--in the waiting-by-the-bedside seat, not over in the corner, so it actually takes him an extra ten seconds to notice her. 

He meets her eyes when he turns his head; she's just sitting there watching him. Her makeup is perfect, and she's wearing a suit. The gray one, the one that means _we're not even going to fuck around with you underestimating the blonde girl lawyer, I'm just going to eviscerate you up front_. She's got her RBG dissent collar pin on her lapel, too, and her favorite black opal earrings in. She's about to drop the hammer on somebody.

Eddie can't help smiling at the sight, and Anne smiles softly for him. For a minute they're _them_ again and she's gonna come home tonight and take out all the aggression she couldn't show a bunch of male lawyers or a male judge on him, and it's gonna be _great_.

Anne reaches out and brushes her fingers gently over his forehead, and her touch feels good--cool, soothing, against a vague feverish ache--and she says, "I need you to take your hoodie off for a little while, okay? I brought you breakfast so you don't have to eat hospital food."

Because he is waking up in a hospital bed, not their bed, and what he's got under the hoodie is a hospital gown and hospital bracelet. Under that he's got nothing but aches that seem to run through all his bones, his joints sore like the start of the flu.

Still, he peels out of his hoodie--probably why he's feeling so warm, sleeping swaddled up in it--and lets Anne take it away, trading him for two paper bags he recognizes instantly. They're from the café a few blocks down from her place--two chocolate croissants in one bag, two breakfast sandwiches in the other. His favorites; she remembered. Eddie fishes out a sandwich and takes a huge bite.

His mouth is still full when Anne sits down next to him again, having disappeared his hoodie somewhere. "So, as far as anyone in a suit is concerned, I'm here as your attorney right now."

Eddie stops chewing, feeling a new kind of cold and sick. Jesus, how many people did he and Venom kill? How many other laws did they break?

Anne shakes her head, putting one hand on his arm. "It's the FBI, they're aware that this is something beyond normal. We're going with the truth, but you blame everything on Venom, Eddie. _Everything_. Do you understand me?"

Eddie slowly starts chewing again, feeling a different kind of sick now. It feels like a betrayal. 

"He saved my life," he manages. It comes out as a whisper, hoarse and small. 

Anne sets a bottle of water on the table next to his breakfast. Eddie obediently sips. 

"He did," Anne says, with a crooked little smile that reminds Eddie that Anne knows Venom--knew him?--better than any other person alive, after Eddie. "And I'm really glad he did, and if he was here I'd try to make sure that was part of his defense. But your life wouldn't have been in danger to begin with if not for him. And he's not here, and he's an _alien_ , so as your legal counsel my advice is that you make it very, very clear to the FBI that you had no control over your actions while he was with you. They have to blame somebody, and we don't want them to latch on to the one person still around to be prosecuted. Drake's not here, Riot's not, Venom's not. You are. Do you understand me?"

Eddie swallows and nods, shrinking a little with the sick sense of guilt being overridden by cold necessity. "Yeah."

"Okay," Anne says. "Eat. If they ask a question you aren't sure how to answer, take a bite and let me do the clarifying, right? Do your best downtrodden. We want them to leave the room certain you would never have done any of that on your own."

Well, that won't be difficult. He definitely wouldn't have.

He's always been just enough of a coward.

 _ **Pussy**_ , Venom called him. Eddie meant to explain to him why not to say it like that when he had a minute, but he never got one.

And no matter how Venom said it, it wouldn't have changed the truth. Without Venom, what is he? Why should he even...

There's a knock at the door.

"Eat," Anne says, softly, and Eddie crams another quarter of a sandwich into his mouth while two suits step in along with a dubious-looking nurse. She asks Eddie if he's feeling up to it. 

Eddie gives a thumbs up, chewing as slowly as he dares, and settles in to throw someone he cares about under the bus for the second time in six months. Out loud and on purpose, this time.

* * *

The FBI doesn't keep him long, after all that. They already seem to mostly know what happened, so Eddie doesn't have to explain much, just describing the stuff Venom did (made him do). He tries to really drive home the part where Venom died saving the Earth from Riot and Drake. The FBI agents are mostly intent on the part where there are a lot--millions--more symbiotes on the comet where the four who came to Earth were collected.

Eddie hopes they're planning on nuking that comet, and not going to get more symbiotes. He suspects it's about fifty-fifty either way.

He feels a little offended, in the end, at how much they treat him like a victim instead of a suspect. Mostly he feels tired, though, and glad when they leave and a doctor--not Dan--comes in to look him over. From the brevity of the checkup, Eddie gets the feeling that Dan leaned on somebody to get him admitted, because the doctor seems pretty sure nothing's wrong with him. 

Eddie admits to being a little sore and a little tired but puts on a smile and makes a few reflexive jokes; the doctor signs his discharge forms and tells him to go home and take it easy for a few days.

Anne drives him to his apartment. They're halfway there before Eddie remembers that his bike got smashed along with his legs and arms a few nights ago. Venom hadn't been able to fix that; Eddie's not even sure where it landed. 

"How do I find out what happened to my bike?" Eddie asks, breaking twenty minutes of silence. "I, uh... it's probably totaled, but I don't even know where exactly."

"The police impounded it," Anne says, because of course she already thought to look into it. "It was evidence at some point, but you should be able to get it back soon. I can check on it for you, as your lawyer, if you want. Do you know where your insurance card is?" 

"Yyyeah," Eddie says, picturing the card in his wallet that probably disintegrated in the seawater, twin to the one he dropped in the top drawer of the filing cabinet by the fridge. He's also picturing the stack of envelopes with ominous late warnings on the outside. Had one of them been from his insurance? "I, uh, I just..."

"Eddie, don't tell me you let your insurance lapse. Do not."

"I'm not _sure_ I did," Eddie offers. "I'm just not sure I didn't, either. Things have been kinda tight."

Anne blows out a breath, and Eddie's all set for her to say something sharp--maybe something about how glad she is that he's not her problem anymore--but instead she says, "Well, we'll work something out."

Eddie squints out at the street, not ready to look at her. "We? Me and my lawyer?"

"No," Anne says, firmly and without hesitating, like it's simple. "You and your friend who knows what you've been through." 

Eddie doesn't say anything else the rest of the way back to his place. The four flights up have never felt so long, and it takes all his attention to just keep climbing. He only realizes when he sees the door that he's kind of expecting to see it hanging open, off its hinges, but of course no one had to kick the door in. He opened it for them. There's no sign of anything that happened here other than the suspiciously shiny floor in the hallway and the smell of fresh paint, like it's been recently cleaned and touched up. 

Eddie's still staring at the gleaming floor when Anne steps around him and goes to his door, unlocking it. He didn't even know she had his keys, although he supposes it makes sense. He sure hadn't had any pockets while he was in the hospital.

He follows her inside, stopping short again once he's past the doorway. Somebody--well, a professional team of somebodies, probably, Eddie's done some stories about those guys--cleaned in here, too. The floors are gleaming and there's a distinct absence of corpses everywhere. Someone stacked up the remains of his coffee table in front of the TV. His mail, with the red stamps on too many envelopes, is piled tidily on the little dining table by the window to the balcony. His plant is still on the windowsill, a few leaves still hanging on despite everything.

The windows to either side of the TV--miraculously intact on its stand--are boarded up, but other than that...

Eddie steps a little farther inside, squinting at the farthest corner of the apartment. "Okay, crime scene cleanup usually doesn't do beds. Or laundry." His bed is neatly made in a way it has possibly never been before, comforter smoothed out and pillows plumped. There are clean folded clothes stacked up at the foot of it, by the shelves.

"That was Dan," Anne says. "The bed, I mean. The laundry we just took to the cleaner and brought back."

"Jesus, Annie," Eddie mumbles, at a loss for any other words. He stumbles to the couch and grabs the fluffier of the pillows that had been placed there, perfectly centered, during the cleanup. He presses his face into it; it smells of faintly citrus cleanser, nothing like blood or gunpowder. "Jesus."

"Eddie." Anne sits down beside him, putting a hand in the middle of his back. "Why don't we just pack up some of those clothes, whatever else you need. You can come back to my place for a few days, just until--"

She cuts off at whatever she sees on Eddie's face when he picks his head up. "Why? Why would you--why would _Dan_ \--until _when_ , Annie?"

She absorbs the little not-quite-outburst, studying him quietly, and then says, "Until you're feeling better, Eddie. You just got out of the hospital."

"For nothing," Eddie points out. He hadn't missed that. He thumps a fist against his chest. "No more parasite. Heart of a marathon runner. I'm fine, Annie. I'm just tired. I just--I just wanna have a minute by myself to get my head around all of this shit, okay?"

Annie's eyes narrow. "But if you get lonely, or you need anything, you will call me, or Dan. Or someone. But preferably me or Dan." She hands him his phone, and Eddie wonders for a minute why she had it, and then remembers where he left it. So it's not water-damaged, at least. "Did Jack..."

"He said he copied the important stuff and he wants to talk to you soon. I'm sure he'll call, probably today. I put in Dan's number, and Kate's--she lives across the street, she feeds Mr. Belvedere sometimes, she's got a key. So if Dan's in surgery and I'm in court--"

"Annie," Eddie says sharply. "What--what do you think I'm gonna--"

She stiffens a little and doesn't look around. Eddie does it for her, his eyes darting reflexively to the kitchen knives on their magnet strip by the door. They're crooked in the same way he last left them. No one had to clean anything off them, apparently.

"You promised me, Eddie. If anything happened to you now, after all of this--it would hurt me, and it would hurt Dan. Do you understand me? If Venom died to save you, that means he wanted you to live too."

Yeah, well, fuck _that_ guy, he's not here now so he doesn't get a vote. Eddie realizes he's still looking at the knives--he wasn't _looking_ really, it's just where his eyes stopped moving--and drags his gaze back to Anne, who's a little flushed under her makeup.

"I mean it," she repeats. "Because I'm not leaving you alone here if I think you're going to do something stupid, Eddie."

"Like, stupider than usual?" Eddie tries, smiling a little. "Because I--"

Anne smacks her palm into his chest, almost a stiff-arm shove. "Don't _joke_ about this, Eddie. You know what I mean. I know you've been through some traumatic shit, and I don't want you to hurt yourself. Okay? Is that sufficiently clear?"

Eddie slumps back on the couch. "Yeah, Annie. I'm not gonna--"

There's a knock on the door, and Eddie feels sweat break out down his spine. There's no voice growling _**Don't open that door**_ , no one hidden under his skin to protect him if he does. There's just him and Anne, and Anne doesn't hesitate, getting up and walking straight to the door.

"Annie!" Eddie blurts, bolting to his feet and reaching for her, just as she reaches the door. She glances through the peephole, a cursory look, and frowns at Eddie as she pulls the door open.

There's a Seamless delivery girl standing there, her hair a mass of curls dyed like a sunset, yellow at the roots fading to red at the ends. She's shorter than Anne, her body softly rounded. She is not a threat. She has brought them food.

Eddie buries his face in the pillow again and lets Anne handle the dealing-with-humans part.

There's sushi, when Eddie sits up again, after the door is locked. They eat quietly--Anne's sharing this time, not just supervising while he eats--and she looks at him every so often, at him and the door and the pillow. She doesn't say, _Come back to my house where you've never been attacked, where every knock on the door won't feel like a threat._

He should, probably. There's probably a bed in the second bedroom now, and even if not, he and the couch are old friends. Mr. Belvedere might sit on the back of it and glare at him all night, but so far he hasn't actually tried to murder Eddie in his sleep. Anne and Dan would be kind, the way they have been through all of this shit, but Eddie...

Eddie would be the sad broken guy brought home to sleep on their couch. It's not the way he wants to walk through Anne's door again. He wants to get back to being him, whoever that is now. Sleep in his own bed, open his own mail, figure out how to pull together the threads of his own life. It's a tire fire, but it's _his_.

 _ **Mine,**_ Venom had said, and Eddie had known it was a threat, but it felt like a promise, too. Like he wouldn't have to be alone, wouldn't have to handle everything alone. And for a little while, he hadn't. 

"Thanks, Annie," he mutters when he's put away as much sushi as his stomach can hold, which... seems to have been a lot. He squints at what's left, at the disposable chopsticks in his hand. "Did you get me a lobster roll?"

"And you ate every bite," Anne says serenely. "Hit the spot, huh?"

"You are not actually a nice woman at all," Eddie informs her, smiling a little. 

She beams back at him like it's a compliment, which of course it is. "Someone's gonna knock on the door in about thirty seconds," she says. "Try not to freak out this time, okay? It's groceries. I know for a fact there's nothing in your fridge. I threw out that old Chinese food, it was growing things."

And just like that he feels winded again, slumping helplessly on his couch while Anne goes to the door to collect a few bags from the guy outside. Eddie makes himself get up and gather up his laundry, putting it away where it belongs, on the shelves by the bed and in the under-bed storage boxes because he prefers not to have his underwear on display to everyone who walks in. 

When he's done that, Eddie sits down on the bed, feeling the little burst of energy he got from adrenaline and food and sheer bewilderment draining away. Anne finishes in the kitchen and comes over to him, still looking gently worried.

"Call me," she says again. "And Jack's going to call, okay? There's easy stuff in the fridge, you don't need to cook." 

Eddie nods. "Thanks," he says, and then, helplessly, because he still doesn't get it and she never answered, "I just--why? Why are you and Dan... what do you care about me? I dragged you into all this shit, and..."

She looks at him for a minute, something quietly, horribly sad in her expression. It's not pity, exactly. Eddie almost thinks he knows the feeling, the resigned unhappiness of knowing that things just are how they are and they're not going to change.

"You're a hard guy not to love, Eddie," she says. "You're an easy guy not to be dating or engaged to or living with, honestly. But hard not to love. I can't just walk away, and Dan won't either, because he cares too. So that's why. Because we're your friends and we care about you and we want to help when you need us, whether you like it or not."

Eddie suspects that he's supposed to have a say in who his friends are, but the last six months have taught him that he can't decide who he cares about, or who anyone else does. He'd have managed to shut off his own feelings about Anne by now, if he could, to save himself missing her. 

It should probably feel satisfying, like some kind of karma, that she's stuck in a similar trap, but he just feels helplessly grateful and a little like he's going to wake up and find out that this was all a dream. It might be easier to believe that his brain conjured up an alien invasion, personal as well as global, just so he could imagine that after all of it Anne would drive him home and make sure he ate lunch before he went to sleep in the bed her new boyfriend made up for him.

"Okay, well," Eddie says. "That sounds like a pretty bad deal for you, but thanks. I'll, uh, I'll call you when I can. Or if I need to," he adds, before she can demand it.

"All right." Anne leans in and presses a kiss to his hair before he even quite realizes what's happening. "Plug your phone in before you go to sleep!"

Eddie doesn't, but either Anne or Jack already charged it for him, so it's fine. It's not like he's running down the battery. He sleeps and wakes up and eats some sandwiches standing practically inside the fridge because the cool air feels so good, and then crawls back into bed. 

It's dark when he wakes up again and he doesn't feel so warm anymore but he's even hungrier. He wants to ignore it--he'll wake up in the morning and eat breakfast--but when he's on the edge of falling asleep he's rattled awake.

**Eddie. _Food._**

He sighs into his pillow and flails his way out of bed, Venom being no help at all. At least the apartment's clean so he doesn't trip over anything on his way to the kitchen. He reaches for the fridge, then spots the bag of fun-size Snickers on the counter and grabs it to take back to bed. 

"Food," he announces, throwing himself back down and ripping the bag open. He fumbles the little wrappers off and crams the candy into his mouth, one after another after another. Venom takes over when he gets impatient with Eddie's speed at unwrapping and eating, snapping up two directly for every one he pushes into Eddie's mouth. Before long the bag is empty, their stomach is full, and Eddie is sliding back down into sleep.

He reaches for Venom from the edge of sleep, wanting to hold on even if the reason for the impulse eludes him. There's a hand in his then, fingers interlaced, the surface of it silky-cool and not exactly skin. Eddie tugs it to his mouth to kiss their knuckles and goes back to sleep with a smile on his face.


	3. Chapter 3

Eddie wakes up to something batting at his cheek. He thinks that Mr. Belvedere is being awfully polite about demanding breakfast and that kind of behavior ought to be rewarded with food--but there's something wrong about the light falling on his closed eyelids. He opens his eyes to see the little shiny black extrusion draw back from his cheek. 

It just stands there, looking at him without visible eyes, no thicker than his finger. After a few frozen seconds it nudges his cheek again, and Venom says, **Time for breakfast, Eddie.**

Eddie shrieks a little and flails, trying simultaneously to launch himself out of bed and away from his own body. He manages only to bang the top of his head against the windowsill over the bed. 

He feels Venom flow out over the bump immediately, and also Venom twining around his wrists and ankles, tugging him into a safe and mostly-comfortable position on the bed.

Eddie stares at the ceiling, panting, then looks at his wrists and ankles. He can see the bands of black Venom is using to hold him--or using to let him see he's being held.

"V," Eddie says aloud. "Venom. What--you--you were dead. I felt it. You were gone. You're gone. Do I have a fucking brain tumor for real this time?"

**Would you expect me to answer that accurately if I was a hallucination?**

"If you're a hallucination then I'm not talking to you," Eddie points out. "I'm just thinking out loud."

There's that ticklish sensation of Venom flowing out from his side, and then Venom's face appears, hanging just above his, that familiar grin unchanged. " **I am not a hallucination.** "

Is _this_ the dream? Not Anne looking after him, but Venom coming back? It feels real, it looks real, but somehow Eddie can't quite believe that it's actually happening, not to him. He isn't the guy who gets this kind of happy ending. He's the guy who almost gets something great and then blows it up.

"Prove it," he says, tugging at his ankles and wrists again. They stay pinned in place. 

Venom's head tilts, and Eddie can hear him thinking--or is that just the whirring of his own thoughts, figuring out how to prove or disprove the impossible?

Venom extends another tendril and then Eddie's phone is being held up above him. Venom sinks down, pressing his head in close to Eddie's on the pillow so they're cheek to cheek. 

" **Smile** ," Venom says, and Eddie does, helplessly, while the shutter clicks again and again, because if this is real--if Venom's really here, pinning him to the mattress and taking still-in-bed selfies with him--

His right hand is freed, his phone dropped into it, and Eddie stares at the screen. It's there, in--well, not exactly black and white, but very vivid and lifelike pixels. There they are, him and Venom looking like one hell of a morning after, Eddie's goofy grin and wonky front tooth next to Venom's sharklike smile. 

He feels Venom in his brain again. Venom's not thinking this time so much as rummaging through Eddie's thoughts, trying to understand what Eddie sees in the selfie, pulling up his memories of other selfies in other beds. 

"It's not exactly..." Eddie says, remembering Anne and Lindsey and Jessica and college hookups of both genders, but Venom is already nuzzling at his cheek, rumbling, **I had a really good time last night,** and tugging on Eddie's hand from the inside. Eddie watches his own fingers move without his direction, snapping another half dozen selfies, and then he turns his head toward Venom, because, what the hell. 

It's not exactly _not_ like that.

Their lips brush, and it takes Eddie a second to realize what feels weirder than it should. Venom's lips are full and soft. Eddie opens his eyes and sees the narrower shape of Venom's face; it's the face he--she? they?--wore when it was Anne inside them. The first time they kissed.

"Is that, hey," Eddie says, drawing back a little. "V, you don't gotta look like that for me. I mean, if you want to," he adds hastily as Venom blinks at him. 

But Venom's in his head and can't misunderstand him, and Venom's face morphs into the more familiar shape, lipless grin widening again. " **Aww, Eddie. You love me the way I am.** "

"Yeah, well, so do you," Eddie says, nestling into the pillow and bringing his phone down to look at the pictures. "You said I'm your perfect match."

" **You are,** " Venom agrees, like it's that simple. 

Eddie shakes his head a little but doesn't argue, flipping through the selfies of Venom kissing his cheek, of them kissing-kissing, just a coy hint of Venom's tongue visible, though it hadn't pushed into his mouth. Unlike that other kiss. Probably for the best no one caught a picture of _that_.

He thinks again of other selfies. Anne had always been careful about what pictures they took, in case they got out. A female attorney had to work hard enough to be taken seriously; she didn't need any remotely risqué pictures floating around. That's not really a problem for him and Venom.

"Oh, fuck," Eddie snaps, fumbling at his phone to stab on the airplane mode button. "Fuck, fuck, fuck, I gotta--"

He pulls up the photos, thumb hovering over the delete button, but it feels like a stone in his stomach, a lead apron crushing his heart. These are the first pictures he and Venom have taken together. They represent this moment, finding themselves together, and realizing they're _together_. Deleting them feels like damaging something that won't heal, like putting a knife to his own skin. This time the idea is scary enough to make him stop and stare.

**Eddie?**

Venom's retreated mostly inside, though there are still black bands wrapped around Eddie's wrists and ankles. "It's--fuck, V, the FBI--I told them it was all you, I told them you did everything and you were dead."

**I did. I was, as far as you could detect.**

"Yeah, but--shit, okay, air gap," Eddie realizes. He bolts out of bed and over to his desk, digging into a file box to pull out the ancient-looking laptop he keeps stashed there. Black gaffer tape reinforces a few corners and covers most of the ports. More gaffer tape covers the one peripheral that's plugged into it, a fan of connectors dangling off, routed through an innocuous looking box. 

This is his air gap laptop. Its guts have been updated, so it runs as well as it needs to, but it's mostly for storing things that he can't risk being hacked, so it doesn't have to run all that well. The shitty exterior is part of its protection, making it look too old and thrashed to be worth stealing if somebody breaks in. It's set up to wipe itself if someone enters too many wrong guesses for the password--which is any number at all, because it has to be unlocked with the thumbprint reader hidden under one of the taped corners. 

Venom's head comes out to peer at the laptop while Eddie logs in. " **What are you scared of?** "

"The FBI," Eddie says. "They're--if we're lucky they would want you, us, in prison or dead. If we're not lucky, they'd stick us in a lab somewhere and _study_ us. And they can get into my phone if they want to, they'd be able to get the warrants and do it _legally_. And I just took fifteen pictures of us looking like anything but a guy being helplessly controlled by an alien that died a few days ago."

" **Looking happy,** " Venom says, and Eddie's pretty sure he's not imagining the faintly questioning tone under the demonic rumble. 

"Happy together," Eddie agrees, and then has to hum the old song, half-mumbling the words-- _imagine me and you, and you and me_ \--while he waits for the laptop to start up. The dongle would nuke the phone's wifi and data connections if they were active, but as it is it just opens up a file directory for him. 

Eddie's stashed a lot of pictures on this thing, so he's able to find and transfer them quickly, and deletes them off the phone when he's done, scrubbing them absolutely. He leaves the ones Jack already knows about, but makes copies of those too, just in case.

"There," Eddie says. "Now they're safe. We can keep our selfies on here and the FBI can't find them."

 **If they do we will eat them,** Venom says. **We will protect us. We will not go to another lab.**

"Yeah, no, see, the FBI is--that's more than we can eat, okay?" Eddie disconnects his phone, and only then opens one of the selfies to admire in full size on the laptop's screen. He lets his phone reconnect and checks to be sure it hadn't had time for a cloud backup before he deleted the selfies.

"They're like policemen but more," he explains to Venom. "We don't eat those guys, and we don't hurt them unless we really, really have to. If they find us, we just run, okay? No arguing about making us look bad, we just go for the water and get out of here."

**Out of San Francisco?**

Eddie sighs, going to sit on the bed again, thinking about it. "I mean, we'd have to get out of California. Out of the United States. You can swim so fast, though, we could go right down the coast," Eddie gestures with his hand, swimming through the air along a southward line on the map he pictures in his head. "To Mexico, and past that. We could go to Guatemala, Honduras, someplace like that where things are real fucked up, where good people are in danger. Eat our way through some drug cartels. Bite off all kinds of heads. _Bad guys'_ heads."

**I like the sound of that. Maybe we should tell the FBI where we are now.**

Eddie shakes his head, still smiling. "How about we _don't_ totally fuck up our lives here and we can go to Central America for a vacation sometime, okay? Take lots of travel photos, eat some heads, and come back without anybody chasing us. That way Anne won't worry about us." Eddie frowns. He can't tell Anne that Venom's back if there's a danger that she might have to lie to the FBI about it. He can't put her in that kind of position, not after what he already did. "About me, anyway."

**Ah. If we stay in San Francisco, we can win her back.**

Eddie shakes his head but doesn't actually tell Venom no, checking the messages on his phone instead. Jack called twice, and also Eddie apparently slept for something like twenty-six hours. He squints at the drift of Snickers wrappers, just barely remembering sharing them with Venom in the dark. "We gotta eat some food and take a shower, is what we gotta do, okay?"

 **I have no objection**.

"Good," Eddie says, heading to the bathroom. Someone rehung the shower rod and put a new curtain on it. Eddie wonders if Anne will blame that on Dan too. He smiles at the thought of talking to her, teasing her, and at the thought that she might not even be lying. None of it was a dream, and he has his symbiote and he has friends, and maybe even a job again. Things are looking up. Way up. Sky's the fucking limit.

"Venom," Eddie says, turning the water on. "Venom, buddy, we saved the fucking planet."

**Yes. That seems fairly obvious from the way that no one attempted to eat you while you were sleeping.**

Eddie snorts and gets in the shower.

* * *

He's offering Venom the idea of all different kinds of food to figure out where they should go for lunch. Venom is ransacking his memory, so that a thousand different tastes and smells flicker across his senses, his mouth watering and empty stomach aching. Eddie is looking around to check he's got his keys, his wallet, his phone, that he's wearing both pants and shoes. He's pretty sure he's got everything and he heads for the door, glancing around the apartment to see everything miraculously in place.

" **NO!** " Venom roars with Eddie's mouth as he takes control, freezing Eddie in place while black wraps around his upper arms, his thighs, his entire torso and his neck. A thick rope of black smashes into the kitchen wall.

Eddie is frozen for a moment, looking around to try to spot the threat Venom is protecting him from, and then Venom draws that rope back in, and Eddie sees what it took away. There are no knives on the magnetic strip now.

He saw them as he was walking to the door, in the same place as always, and he thought, _Good, I still have those, I could use them._ Just another escape route to know. Just in case.

"Venom," Eddie says, a little choked. Venom loosens his grip slightly but stays circled protectively around Eddie's throat and chest and around the tops of his arms and legs where the big arteries are easy to find. Eddie closes his eyes. "V, buddy, it's not... that wasn't..."

**You thought to destroy yourself. You looked at the knives and you saw your own blood. Your own death.**

"I mean..." Eddie waggles a hand. "Not, like... not really _saw_. Just... it was nothing, just a thought, it doesn't mean anything. I'm not gonna do anything."

He can feel Venom rummaging through his thoughts, memories, finding the sources of all his scars, running through every one of his lowest moments--including the whole time Eddie was in the hospital, numb and aching and unable to think at all. Eddie slumps in Venom's hold--he would be sitting on the floor if it was up to him, and as it is Venom turns him and moves him to the couch, sitting him down. He wraps a blanket aggressively around Eddie, holding him in place.

"I thought you were hungry," Eddie tries. 

**I thought you were competent in basic life functions like _not destroying yourself_.**

"Okay, to be fair, I don't know that the time we've been together completely supports--"

Venom lets out an internal howl of rage that rattles Eddie's bones and stuns him silent.

Because it's not just rage. It's fear, and hurt. 

Venom squeezes him tighter, like a kid clutching a toy someone has threatened to take away. **You were happy,** Venom says. He sounds angry and hurt and _bewildered_. 

**You were happy, you said you were happy. Together, me and you. You were glad to be us. You said we would escape together if there was danger. I could feel it was true. And still you looked at the knives and thought of shedding your own blood.**

Eddie sighs and relaxes into Venom's hold, tipping his head back to stare up at the ceiling. "It's just... it's a habit. Can you tell when the first time was that I thought about it? Because I honestly don't know."

Venom takes the question seriously, searching back and back through Eddie's memories. 

_Eddie is hiding, curled inside the big tub by the washing machine--small enough to fit down inside it, wrapped in the knitted blanket the housekeeper made for him. He's looking at the bleach on the shelf over the washing machine. It says WARNING on it, and he knows that means he mustn't touch it, and he thinks maybe his father would notice him if he did._

**You were a spawnling. Still forming, not yet old enough to survive alone. And already you were thinking of ways to die.**

"Yeah, well, so now you know," Eddie says wearily. He kind of wishes he didn't remember that, although it's not exactly something he ever forgot, he just... didn't have to think about it before he had somebody poking around his brain all the time. "You got a defective one. If you wanna trade up, I'll--"

**You are mine. I will not let you come to any harm, including from yourself.**

"Well, there you go then," Eddie says, shrugging, already tired of talking about this. "Problem solved, right? You're here, you won't let anything happen." Eddie looks over at the empty magnet strip again. "What did you do with my kitchen knives?"

**Digested them. You have never used them for anything you should use them for.**

"Yeah, but... there's you now, I should probably cook. We can't eat out all the time."

**I will handle the cutting of things.**

Eddie squints down at himself, flexing against the bands holding him. "You can digest steel?"

**I can digest a human skull. Carbon is carbon.**

Eddie tilts his head, accepting the point. "Okay, well, can we go have lunch now?" 

He doesn't really feel hungry anymore, but he knows going outside and moving around and eating will all help with the gray haze creeping into his brain. 

**I don't understand. This is damage, but I don't know how to repair it. You are not safe. What if I was separated from you again?**

Eddie sighs. "Look, I... a while ago, I promised Annie I wouldn't do anything stupid. I can promise you too, if you want. I'm not gonna, V, I'm really--I know I do dumb stuff, but I used to be way, _way_ , dumber, okay? And I survived that. I'm not gonna fuck it up now."

**But you think of it. Even when you were happy you thought of it. And now thinking of it has ruined your happiness.**

Eddie worms a hand under his shirt to pet over the weird silky-slime feeling of Venom over his skin. "I'll get happy again, I promise. It's just... it's shitty thinking about how bad my brain works sometimes. And I don't like that you're stuck in a brain like that."

**I don't like that _you_ are stuck in a brain like that!**

Eddie rolls his eyes. "It's _my brain_ , V. Always been like this, you saw. Who'd I even be if I didn't have this brain, huh? I wouldn't even know myself."

**Do you know yourself when you share your brain and body with an alien symbiote?**

That is kind of a deep philosophical question, but, "Okay, yeah. I get your point. But brains, minds, they aren't like hearts or bones, there's nothing you or anybody can just go in and fix."

 **You are not telling the whole truth,** Venom insists, probing at his thoughts. **There are treatments.**

"Yeah, but the drugs take forever to figure out and some of 'em got all these side effects, I might not be able to work, and what am I gonna go tell a therapist about? 'Sometimes I think about dying but I don't actually try it, I just think about it, and now I got this buddy who thinks that's not okay, so take some time away from all the poor bastards that might actually hurt themselves because I wanna be happier.' I'd probably start arguing with you halfway through and end up in a straitjacket, or Thorazined to the eyeballs."

**I could metabolize it. I could break you free. I won't let any harm come to you. But I can see in your mind that you know there are ways to get better. You don't have to hurt.**

"I'm not _hurting_ , it's just--I just--just in case I can't take it anymore. Later. If things are bad. And things are _good_ now, I got you, Annie's speaking to me, Dan likes me for some reason--"

**And you still looked at the knives.**

Eddie closes his eyes, giving in. It's obvious Venom's not going to let this go. "Fine. Fine, I get it, that's not good. I'll find somebody to talk to. But if the drugs make me feel all fucked up you gotta clear 'em out for me, okay?"

 **Obviously,** Venom growls. **And if anyone tries to tie you up we will go to Guatemala and eat all the drug cartels.**

Eddie figures that technically being stuck in some horror-story asylum is fairly unlikely, so that's more or less safe to agree to. "Yeah, okay."

Venom pulls his phone out of his pocket and brandishes it in his face. Eddie grins, letting himself feel Venom's determination and relief. "I, uh, I don't know if I can make an appointment right this second, V, I gotta do some research and figure out who takes my shitty insurance and everything. Can we go have lunch first?"

**Put it on the calendar then. With an alarm. And make it color-coded.**

Eddie snorts, but takes the phone--Venom's let up his grip enough that Eddie can--and navigates to his own empty calendar to schedule it for ten o'clock tomorrow morning, with an alarm: _Find therapist, make appt_. 

He sets the color to black, so the text shows up in white. Then he changes the text to all caps, so it really looks like Venom shouting the reminder at him. 

**Good. Yes. Now. We will go eat a very large burger. Rare. With bacon on it. And tater tots. And drink something fizzy with no poisons in it.**

"Okay, V," Eddie says. "You gonna let me off the couch, though?"

Venom unwraps the blanket from around him and pulls him back up to his feet. Eddie can still feel Venom holding on, gripping tight around his arms and legs and belly and chest, even if he melts reluctantly away from Eddie's throat. Eddie can still feel him, like a hug. Like armor. He's not gonna ask Venom to stop, even if he thought Venom would do anything other than laugh at him and hug tighter.

**After lunch we will get coffee. And something chocolate to eat. And we will take Annie some to tell her thank you for helping. That way we can start to win her back.**

Eddie smiles, shaking his head as they head out of the apartment. "Tell me the truth, are you an _optimist_?"

**One of your many deficiencies I can make up for.**

Eddie only remembers when they're down in the alley that his bike is still only God (and the SFPD) knows where. They're going to have to walk everywhere, but that's all right. They have plenty of time, and it's a beautiful day.

**Author's Note:**

> I am also on [Tumblr](http://dsudis.tumblr.com)! And my alter ego who writes weird gay paranormal romance is also also on Tumblr, [over here](http://dessa-lux.tumblr.com).


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